


Unravel

by ishka



Category: Free!
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5181662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/pseuds/ishka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clothed or not, Rei is one congruous, even, polished, existence and Sousuke wants to know how far he can be stripped down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unravel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [popnographic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/popnographic/gifts).



> WHO KNOWS WHAT THIS IS but it is for [popnographic](http://popnographic.tumblr.com) because it is SouRei and SouRei is a gr8 idea. This was fun(?) to try and figure out (??? was it??? i'm still not sure). When in doubt use an extended clothing metaphor to try and get a feel for your ships.

Five days a week they ride the same train.

It took Sousuke three weeks to notice him at all. One week to remember who the fuck he was. Another day for his name- Ryukuza? Ryuzuki? Right, Ryuugazaki, and does he even have a first name? Rei?- and just when he was ready to leave that mystery solved and done with and behind him, he notices Sousuke and decides he has to fucking comment on it.

“Sousuke Yamazaki? Is that you?”

“Last I checked.”

It isn’t that he ever disliked the little butterfly that barely could, it’s just he’s never said more than a handful of words to him, and the train station at six in the morning is close to the worst possible conversational conduit he can think of. Not that he’s thinking very complexly at all, four hours of sleep that he’s currently running on keeping him slow. 

“Well it’s good to see you again,” Rei continues. “Even under these depraved circumstances.”

Sousuke snorts. “Not a morning guy?”

“I am, actually, but you’re clearly not.”

He grunts and rolls his head side to side. “Then I guess you’ll understand if I don’t have a lot to say.”

“What do you do?” Rei asks anyway, hardly deterred. Or stupid and just not getting it, one or the other. 

“Why don’t you bring me coffee tomorrow, and I’ll consider thinking about my job before I’m actually physically there.”

Their train pulls up and Sousuke makes sure the crowd separates them.

-

He brings it, homebrewed in a spare thermos, and Sousuke sighs at the sight of his outstretched hand. “I was kidding.”

Rei shrugs and insists it forward, and Sousuke reluctantly takes it. “It’s a long commute. I can only read so many books. If I can potentially bribe you for the conversation, I’m going to try to.”

Sousuke eyes him over the thermos as he tips it back. The brew is borderline black; only the faintest hint of cream and a healthy dose of cinnamon mingles with the bitterness. Rei is in a three piece suit- Sousuke’s going to go ahead and guess that isn’t a dress code requirement and he simply chooses to dress that way- his red glasses from school years prior ditched in favor of a sleek and grown up gunmetal grey. He’s handsome, still built, and Sousuke’s fine with this view as opposed to the tar stained cement of the train platform. He looks torn out of an upscale menswear magazine, the sort of publication Sousuke tries to take tips from but only ultimately ends up buying one piece to the puzzle that makes up a good looking outfit. Ryuugazaki clearly does not have this problem.

“How is it?” Rei looks proud of his creation, and clearly already knows the answer: it’s perfect. Just like he seems to be. “It’s from a nice french press.”

Of course it is, he wants to say. “Good enough for me to tell you I work with my father. Advertising. I’m an account man.”

Rei looks pleased with his answer, and takes a sip from his own mug. 

“I’m hoping you work in fashion. No one wears a three piece suit that damn trendy and nice to an office park.”

He reddens like Sousuke called him out on some sort of secret. “I don’t. But thank you for the compliment? Just a cog at a law firm.”

“Cogs can’t buy suits like that,” Sousuke presses.

Rei laughs, a punctuated chuckle that doesn’t fit the rest of him. “I’m a large cog, but a cog nonetheless.”

Sousuke returns the thermos on the train ride home, but they end up talking at the station for another hour after they get off, Sousuke doesn’t miss how straight he stands while Sousuke slouches.

-

On Fridays, Rei wears a two piece suit. Sousuke waits for a few of those to pass before he comments on it, even though he noticed right away. He’s not one for giving a shit if he comes off as too bold, it’s sort of what he does for a living after all, but considering he has to share a train every day with the guy, it behooves him to not make things weird. Besides, he’s getting used to the coffee.

“Casual Fridays,” he states with a quirk of his lips once they’re seated for another long commute.

“I’m surprised you only noticed now,” Rei picks up without pause.

“Maybe I did a while ago and didn’t want to scare off my personal barista.” Sousuke takes a sip with that, and sighs through his nose as he’s warmed up from the inside by immaculately crafted caffeine.

“You’re a lot different than I thought you would be,” Rei remarks, watching him intently, and Sousuke wonders why he does now that it’s been established he likes the damn drink. Rei looks like he’s working out a fucking calculation when he looks at Sousuke, and it’s unnerving. 

“I get that often enough to be convinced that I must look like a raging douchebag at all times.”

Rei clears his throat and looks to the window, which is good enough of a response for Sousuke and gets his eyes off of him. “It’s the scowl.”

“Well you only got about half the length of stick up your ass that I assumed you did. It’s the glasses.”

Rei laughs at that and turns back to him, and tells Sousuke the answer to the problem he’s been working on. “Do you want to get dinner after work?”

Sousuke freezes and stares, the sudden turn in conversation tripping him up. “Huh? Wait- _me?_ ”

The flustered awkward kid from Iwatobi that Sousuke remembers rears his head, and Rei goes beet red and looks down; his even keel at a stumble and a stutter. “Um. Y-yes. You. S-sorry if-”

Somehow knowing Rei isn’t all collected, professional confidence makes it easier to agree, because now he's curious. “Sushi? Kind of have a craving.”

-

There’s one more stage to the common suit just below two pieces, and that’s _off_ completely and haphazardly thrown over a chair and in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor. Super Casual Friday Nights, or something. The advantage of a two piece suit over a three piece suit is the reduction in number of buttons overall to unfasten when you’re trying to get the owner out of it as quickly as possible. Sousuke’s thought a lot about what he wants to do to Rei over the last few hours while he let the alcohol slowly yawn those dormant desires open for him, and learns quickly that Rei’s been thinking the same of him for much longer, and it was likely a factor in his equation from that morning.

Clothed or not, Rei is one congruous, even, polished, existence and Sousuke wants to know how far he can be stripped down.

Sousuke’s made up of a lot of different patch jobs. He’s complete, but still an uneven quilt. A pair of jeans that probably should’ve been tossed but were too worn in and comfortable to give up on. He’s reinforced where he’s been torn and still fragile where he hasn’t been and waits to be out of habit. 

All of his loose threads have been clipped close; he’s worked hard to make sure they can be hidden by a nice jacket and slacks. He dresses to hide what he can’t get to under crisp shirts and sharp colors, as it isn’t anyone’s business to know how many times he’s been torn up and been put back together. He’s known too many to find these snags and pull and pull and _pull,_ until another fragile part of Sousuke unravels and he’s left to mend another uneven stitch to himself to fix it. 

But Rei dresses to perfection, and Sousuke thinks he wouldn’t know imperfection if it hit him in his perfectly balanced face, so he lets Rei look. 

Rei folds Sousuke’s clothes back as if they don’t fit, grabbing for purchase where there isn’t any, taking too much where there is and he wasn’t expecting it, and doesn’t seem satisfied with Sousuke even a little until he can run his fingers over what’s been covered up under the clothes that don’t fit right. Only then does Rei smile, pausing to trace his eyes over Sousuke’s mismatched collarbones (he broke one when he was four and the other when he was seven), his uneven shoulders (one’s always drawn up and tense out of habit), his hips that sit crooked from the perpetual slouch he can’t break (at a stand or with one leg over the other). Sousuke thinks he’s made a mistake to let him look when Rei kisses over every fucking snag that Sousuke thought wasn’t visible to a person like him.

Every layer Sousuke takes from Rei is perfectly constructed and fitted by contrast. Every stitch is in its place, every curve follows the flow of his nearly flawless body. The buttons of his dress shirt align precisely with every other ridge of his sternum, the snap of his dress pants an even six centimeters directly below and centered with his navel. Sousuke measures these distances with his lips. One side of Rei’s skin mirrors the other, never pulled too roughly over jaggedly healed bone or tense around the ghosts of wounds past, and his posture takes influence from the unforgiving linear laws of light and will not bend.

Whether he’s three piece or no piece, Rei is above all tailor-fucking-made for Sousuke’s tired hands and this wasn’t a conclusion Sousuke reached on his own. He’s being told nothing fits the lines of Rei’s body better than Sousuke when Rei stretches, arches, and sighs for his touch, begs for the friction of rough patchwork along the ends of his soft nerves. Rei is finally comfortable when he’s draped in imperfection, and he wants Sousuke to know it and feel it and believe it. 

Rei worries at the clipped threads that Sousuke thought he cut close enough, able to pick up on their imperceptible catches when he drags his fingers down Sousuke’s steady back, and Sousuke knows he had it very wrong. He realizes Rei only exists to find imperfection, he sees it everywhere and in everything, and it makes Sousuke’s heart that sits slightly more to the right than average for a male his age and size seize and go cold when Rei tugs lightly at what finds, curious by his nature and in briefly-lived wonderment-

But Rei smooths these frays back down and leaves them be and breathes heat back into Sousuke’s heart, because Rei likes Sousuke better with fettered ends.

Sousuke thinks he likes Rei better outside of his suits completely, both literally and figuratively, business and swim, and in a white undershirt that shows off everything trim and sexy or in a normal baggy t-shirt that Sousuke owns and lets him wear that night to sleep in (the orange one with a faded kangaroo). Sousuke likes him better when he can see all the different ways he could fold Rei and come out with two even sides without the help of his three piece armor, knowing he’s just that precise all the way down to the two fucking stupid freckles he has low on each hip in approximately the same place. 

Sousuke likes him better with his shit eyesight and clumsy hands knocking over everything on the nightstand in search for his phone to gasp in mock surprise that it’s late, and he really should be going, and not meaning a single word of it when he flicks his still unsatisfied gaze back over Sousuke’s flawed form. Sousuke likes him better knowing he’s so damn perfect and that it isn’t just a front, that he’s really this way down to his foundations, and yet at the same time Rei’s just as flawed as he is for seeing beauty in Sousuke as he is, knowing Sousuke could be better and selfishly wanting him as-is anyway, and not being satisfied at all with being given Sousuke’s entire soul. He wants more.

There’s still a patchy flush to Rei’s face long after Sousuke’s hooked an arm around his waist and dragged him down to his bed to sleep despite Rei’s protestations, and he leans over Rei to brush cooled thumbs along his cheeks to break it up and give him back his pale and placid congruence, but Rei doesn’t like it. His disappointment is evident. So Sousuke kisses it back onto his face after a moment of thought, the blush creeping back over his ears and all the way down the front of his chest. Sousuke likes him better with this decidedly uneven tone, with lust fighting affection just below it, and Rei seems to revel in something about himself that can’t be evenly folded as well.

“I hope this doesn’t change our coffee arrangement,” Sousuke thinks to remark with a yawn as he dozes off.

“Anything but.”

-

On Monday Rei’s in three pieces again with a travel mug in each hand, and Sousuke wears his usual unremarkable two piece cloak and tie. The coffee is perfect, Sousuke should probably pick up a french press for the weekends, but then again thinks he can hold off on that purchase as Rei’s fingers linger over his own at the exchange with the implication that he’ll have access to one in the future anyway. 

Rei grins uncharacteristically crooked as he steps back and Sousuke stands up straight for once.


End file.
